A series of offensive, racist tweets were posted to Mariah Carey’s Twitter profile this afternoon, the result of an apparent hack, confirmed a Twitter spokesperson to The Hollywood Reporter. The tweets began around 3pm PST and continued throughout the day, reaching Carey’s 21.4 million followers. Many of the tweets used the N-word and tagged other Twitter accounts. A few others called out Eminem, likely in reference to Carey and Eminem’s long-standing feud, with one tweet reading, “Eminem has a little penis.†Tweets from the hacked account also referred to the Chuckling Squad, the hacking group that targeted Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s account back in August, as well as other celebrties, like Chloë Grace Moretz.
The hacking of Dorsey’s account was done via a process called SIM-swapping, in which hackers convince a wireless carrier to switch a targeted phone number over to a personal SIM card. Hackers can then bypass the two-factor authentication checks that protect most sensitive accounts, like Twitter. This was the technique used by the hackers who leaked Justin Bieber’s nudes through Selena Gomez’s Instagram account in 2017. It is unknown, however, if Carey’s account was accessed the same way. All tweets have since been removed from Carey’s account, though Carey has yet to release a statement addressing the incident.